Analyzes cultural awareness as a key element for stabilizing and rebuilding war-torn nations, and discusses how the Army can implement it in the current warfight. Recent post-conflict operations in a growing number of areas around the world -- Bosnia, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq, to name a few -- have shown a need for a new set of cultural insights with which to inform government policies and new cultural skills with which to complement the combat competencies of intervention forces. Current efforts in this vein are not doing enough -- the time is right for a plan "C" that calls for the engagement of skilled and independent experts to mediate among the minorities, the state, the coalition and others in the world community, and to guide those who serve in theater.

Caption title. "June 2007."

Culture: the missing element -- The need for intercultural expertise.